Ruben Amaro believes the Red Sox are the team to beat

FORT MYERS, Fla. — If Red Sox fans were looking for how the rest of the baseball world viewed their team, they might want to have sat in on Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro’s meeting with the media prior to his team’s game against the Sox Thursday at City of Palms Park.

“This is the best club in baseball, I think,” Amaro said. “The combination of speed power pitching bullpen, they’re a hell of a ballclub. Don’t have a whole lot of holes.”

Amaro’s team, of course, is no slouch, either. With addition of Cliff Lee to a rotation that already included Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, and Thursday’s starter, Cole Hamels, many believe the Philadelphia is the team to beat in the National League. But, evidently, the Phils’ chief decision-maker believes his club still has some catching up to do if they’re to be lumped in with the Red Sox.

“Any time you bring tha kind of talent to your club, they did a heck of a job,” Amaro said. “They already had a great team except for a whole hell of a lot of injuries. For them being in the race, to hang around as decimated as they were, they were decimated every bit as much as the Mets were a couple years back.”